Hacker News Reader

Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, some of these restaurants might want to rethink their font sizes and background colours, since their current menus are very hard to read. The one from Phuket Cafe with pink text on a pink background is damn near impossible to parse from a distance (or if you have less than perfect vision), whereas the examples of menus with tiny fonts are barely readable in general.

View on HN

There's an inverse correlation regarding font size and price - the smaller the font, the more expensive the menu.

At this point I'm ready to tip someone extra simply for having a menu. So many places have tried to hold on to the COVID menu QR code nonsense, and I just refuse.

Walked straight out of a place the other day for that reason.

Could I have a menu please?

Sir, you have to scan the QR code...

I have a flip phone

Oh... pause

Oh... longer pause

They literally had no solution to the problem

You're not in their demographic.

I mentioned previously a small Chinese restaurant in a mall in Silicon Valley which offered only a QR code. But it didn't lead to a display of the menu. It led to the onboarding funnel for a ordering app. Dine-in had been made a special case of food delivery, with a very short delivery distance. Terms of service and an EULA, of course.

We declined to be "onboarded", and managed to order from the counter.

> It led to the onboarding funnel for a ordering app.

I wonder if they get a kickback.

Saw that the other day. The waiter literally let the patrons borrow his own phone so they could order. What if there had been more tables in the same situation? No idea.

This has happened to me on multiple occasions when traveling abroad where I didn't have cellular service.

"Do you have wifi here?" Nope. "Can you just tell me what's on the menu?" Nope. Here, just use my cell phone.

Sort of related, in many parts of the world, thousands of people have the same Google account because when they buy an Android phone at the store, the vendor logs into the mandatory Google account.

That sounds apocryphal; android stores contacts in the google account by default. Any such account would have a million contacts.

If a restaurant can't provide me with a real menu, then I can't know what I can order, so I leave.

This is how we keep the old people out.

Or people who care about privacy and not scanning any QR code.

Or people who don't want to go scanning random crap that MAY be a restaurant code.

Or people who forgot/lost their phone.

Or people who intentionally have a feature phone to get rid of gamification crap.

But yeah... I guess it does keep out older people too.

This comes off as weirdly hostile to someone who is on your side. Not sure if that's your intent.

My bad. Sarcasm doesn't always land.

I'm 4 for 5 on that list (including being old). If I wanted to order in a kiosk, I'd be at McDonalds. I tip 20%+, but happy to tip less for less service. (Yea, I know, tips are really a byproduct of owners not paying wages)

I never scan QR codes, because you never really know where that code goes unless you printed it.

(And for what it's worth, most McD's have flipped their counter service with a human to be the same queue as the drive through. I just tell them I have cataracts and can't read the board, tell them triple cheeseburger, small fry, etc. My order goes in as the next car, but they bring it to the counter. On a busy day I get my food way ahead of anyone that used the kiosk, or walked in and used the app. )

Ah yes - Old age and cunning shall overcome newfangled technology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com